A Playground Space Built For "Breaking Things," at Stanford's d.school

This week, Linda Tischler has revealed the ins and outs of Stanford's new d.school building. We asked the students to provide some insight on their new digs as well.

We're part of the "No Teacher Left Behind" d.school class and we're using the playground space in the d.school lobby to sit and discuss our reading of Clay Christensen's book, Disrupting Class. The modular space is fun because it can accommodate different group sizes and configurations easily. When play and movement are encouraged the blood gets flowing and innovative ideas follow. Here we're creating questions from our reading of the book and our experience as classroom teachers—we're asking the big questions about K-12 education and the role of technology, individualized learning, and specialized curriculum. We're tasked to break things, to blow things up. There's never the sense that we're messing up the way "things are supposed to be," so we can make the space fit our needs.

— Christopher Ruszkowski, Gavin Sosa, and Jasmine Wong are all masters candidates in Stanford's School of Education studying policy and leadership. They are currently taking the d.school class No Teacher Left Behind, which is sponsored by the New School's Venture Fund.